Making Sin Abhorrent (part one)
Understanding the Reason for God’s Fury against Sin
Why we must make sin utterly deplorable when we preach the gospel By Jay Wegter
Recently I spoke with an unsaved neighbor of mine about the coming Day of the Lord (Zeph 1:14-2:3). When I described the cataclysmic events that will accompany Christ’s return, my friend’s response was quite revealing. He said something to the effect of, “Why would God send all those disasters? Why is God so upset?” “What is His problem, why does He want to do that to us instead of being good to us?”
As I began to explain to my neighbor that we as sinners are very sensitive to suffering and injustice, but very insensitive to sin, he became noticeably uncomfortable. In fact he said that he had to walk his dog and might be back. It was clear that he was ‘found out’ so to speak. God’s truth, even when communicated as biblical principles, makes the guilty uncomfortable (it is fear of exposure—John 3:20).
What modern sinners never consider is that sin is the ultimate cause of suffering (Rom 8:18-25; Rev 21:1-8). Disasters are the result of a cursed creation (Gen 3:17-19). Natural disasters find their ultimate cause in an unnatural disaster—that is the entrance of human sin (Rom 5:12). Natural disasters are the consequence of man’s failed stewardship (Is 24). Apart from the gift of repentance, sinners always discount the severity and gravity of the sin disaster. In our evangelism we find it useful to ask the following question, “How much of a disaster do you think sin is?” “May I share with you what God says about its seriousness?”
Now back to our original question, why is God so furious against human sin? To begin to answer this question adequately we must consider the reason why God made man in the first place. The purpose God made human beings is bound up in our creational identity; we are “the image and likeness of God” (Gen 1:26-28). The last stage in the progress of creation being now reached—God said, Let us make man —words which show the peculiar importance of the work to be done, the formation of a creature, who was to be God’s representative, clothed with authority and rule as visible head and monarch of the world (Ps 8).
In our image, after our likeness—this was a peculiar distinction, the value attached to which appears in the words being twice mentioned. And in what did this image of God consist? Not in the erect form or features of man, not in his intellect, for the devil and his angels are, in this respect, far superior; not in his immortality, for he has not, like God, a past as well as a future eternity of being; but in the moral dispositions of his soul, commonly called original righteousness (Ec 7:29). As the new creation is only a restoration of this image, the history of the one throws light on the other; and we are informed that it is renewed after the image of God in knowledge, righteousness, and true holiness (Col 3:10; Eph 4:24).
Genesis 1:28 -- Be fruitful, &c.—the human race in every country and age has been the offspring of the first pair. Amid all the varieties found among men, some black, some copper-colored, others white, the researches of modern science lead to a conclusion, fully accordant with the sacred history, that they are all of one species and of one family (Acts 17:26). What power in the word of God! “He spake and it was done. He commanded and all things stood fast” [Ps 33:9]. “Great and manifold are thy works, Lord God Almighty! In wisdom hast thou made them all” [Ps 104:24]. God is represented as pausing at every stage to look at His work. No wonder He contemplated it with complacency. Every object was in its right place, every plant process going on in season, every animal in its structure and instincts suited to its mode of life and its use in the economy of the world. He saw everything that He had made answering the plan which His eternal wisdom had conceived; and, “Behold it was very good” [Gen 1:31].¹
1 Jamieson, R., Fausset, A. R., Fausset, A. R., Brown, D., & Brown, D. (1997). A commentary, critical and explanatory, on the Old and New Testaments (Ge 1:26–28). Oak Harbor, WA: Logos Research Systems, Inc.
Mankind was created to represent God; to reflect God; to serve God; and to know God. God created the universe as a stage for His moral majesty (His holiness). Mankind as the image of God was designed to reflect God’s character in all of life’s activities. Therefore, when sin entered, man became like a broken mirror—the reflection was no longer true; but distorted and fractured. Every sin we commit tells a lie about God. Because we are God’s representatives (and His image); our transgressions profane His great Name. Our Creator is truthful and good, but our lies and coveting say that He is not truthful or good. Our iniquities are against God because they besmirch His great Name. Man’s glory is his knowledge of the God of glory. Jeremiah 9:23 --Thus says the LORD, “Let not a wise man boast of his wisdom, and let not the mighty man boast of his might, let not a rich man boast of his riches; 24 but let him who boasts boast of this, that he understands and knows Me, that I am the LORD who exercises lovingkindness, justice, and righteousness on earth; for I delight in these things,” declares the LORD. ²
When man ‘puts God out to pasture’ (replacing his Creator with created things)—there is a radical loss of human glory. Mankind’s loss of the glory of God is a function of having exchanged the glory of our Creator for the ‘glory’ of lower life forms (Ps 106:20), “birds and four-footed animals and crawling creatures” (Rom 1:23). Our glory is derivative—it is closely tied to knowing the God of glory. The entrance of sin produced a forfeiting of the glory of God. Now every sinner ‘falls short of the glory of God’ (by reason of sin we have forfeited the ability to comprehend, reflect, know, and love His glory).
Romans 3:23 – In this passage, Paul explained that “no difference” existed among human beings because all have sinned. The Greek is literally, “all sinned” (pantes hēmarton). The same two Greek words are used in 5:12. Since the entire human race was plunged into sin with Adam, all (whether Jews or Gentiles) are sinners. In terms of fallen man’s relation to God’s glory; there is no relative righteousness—all have fallen short of it.
Not only did all sin, but also all fall short. This single Greek verb is in the present tense, stressing continuing action. It can be translated “keep on falling short.” The simple fact is that as a sinner not a single human being by his own efforts is able to measure up to the glory of God. God’s glory is His splendor, the outward manifestation of His attributes. God desires that humans share that splendor, that they become like Him, that is, Christ-like (cf. “glory” in 5:2; 2 Cor. 3:18; Col. 1:27; 2 Thes. 2:14). Yet their sin keeps them from sharing it.³
When man attempts to be the focal point of his own life, he will find that he cannot bear the weight of being his own meaning, value, dignity, purpose, unity, identity, and integration. When man attempts to be his own god; all hell breaks loose. Mankind is upheld by the power of God every moment. We are utterly dependent upon God. Our life breath and ways are in His hands. By Him all things exist and are upheld (Heb 1:1-3). Therefore man’s arrogant claim to be autonomous is an immeasurable affront to God and His character.
How accurate the statement that all pride is based upon ignorance. The Lord has determined to slay the pride of man (1 Cor 1:18-21). And, to those who hate God, the Lord threatens to repay them to their faces (Deut 7:10). It is a central purpose of God in history to bring down the arrogant (Jer 50:29-32). Sinful man’s imagined autonomy will die in an instant when the Day of the Lord takes place. We are created to live upon God, who is the constant ground of our being. The dependent creature is upheld every moment by the self-existent Creator. But this foundational truth is obscured by the pride of man. Think of that Day when God in Christ will again invade human history. On that awesome day the God of the universe will confront the innumerable little man-made ‘universes’ of millions of sinners who have made themselves ‘little gods’. What an inconceivable carnage that will be when arrogant men of dust are confronted with the self-existent One—there will be no place to stand (Rev 19:17-21).
2 New American Standard Bible : 1995 update. 1995 (Je 9:23–24). LaHabra, CA: The Lockman Foundation. 3 Walvoord, J. F., Zuck, R. B., & Dallas Theological Seminary. (1983-). The Bible knowledge commentary: An exposition of the scriptures (Ro 3:23). Wheaton, IL: Victor Books.
The inseparable connection between sin and misery is a revelation of the justice of God. It was a southern preacher who titled his Romans 6:23 sermon on the inescapable wages of sin, “Payday Someday.” Penalty is the pain or loss which is directly inflicted by the Lawgiver in vindication of His justice, which has been outraged by the violation of law. There are natural consequences of sin: “For the wages of sin is death.…” (Rom 6:23); “the soul that sinneth, it shall die” (Ez 18:20a); “and as it is appointed unto men once to die, but after this the judgment.…” (Heb 9:27). Physical death is one of the natural results of sin, but there is an “after this” which represents the penalty to follow. We do not doubt that the natural consequences of sin are part of the penalty. “His own iniquities shall take the wicked himself, and he shall be holden with the cords of his sin” (Prov 5:22). Immorality takes its toll upon the human body. Ungodliness results in mental and spiritual deterioration. But this is only part of the penalty. In all penalty inflicted by the Almighty there is the holy wrath of the Lawgiver. Temporal wrath (penalty) may be suffered now, but the other is to be experienced in the future. “Depravity and guilt, as consequences of sin, rest upon mankind now, but penalty in its fullness awaits a future day.”
Because of God’s justice there is an inseparable connection between sin and misery. The fact that holiness promotes happiness is a revelation of the relation in which God stands to holiness. The fact that sin produces misery is no less a revelation of the relation in which He stands to moral evil. This constitution of things depending on the nature and will of God proves that sin is evil in its own nature, and is punished for its own sake. The law of God which includes a penalty as well as precepts, is in both a revelation of the nature of God. If the precepts manifest his holiness, the penalty as clearly manifests his justice. If the one is immutable, so also is the other. The wages of sin is death. Death is what is due to it in justice—to spare the sinner from death would be an act of injustice.
The Scriptural doctrines of satisfaction and justification rest on the principle that God is immutably just—that his moral excellence, in the case of sin, demands punishment, or expiation. The Bible clearly teaches the necessity of satisfaction to justice in order for there to be forgiveness of sin. Christ was set forth as a propitiation in order that God might be just in justifying the ungodly. This assumes that it would be unjust, or contrary to moral rectitude, to pardon the guilty without such a propitiation. This necessity for a satisfaction is never referred to expediency—or to governmental considerations. If sin could have been pardoned, without a satisfaction, the Apostle says, Christ is dead in vain (Gal 2:21). If there could have been a law which could have given life, salvation would have been by the law (Gal 3:21).
Moreover, if there is no such attribute in God as justice, as distinguished from benevolence, then there can be no such thing as justification. There may be pardon, as the act of a sovereign remitting a penalty and restoring an offender to favor; but no such thing as justification, as an act of a judge proceeding according to law and pronouncing the demands of justice satisfied. The Scriptures, however, according to the almost unanimous judgment of the Church, pronounce that justification is more than an act of executive clemency. Conscience is not satisfied with mere forgiveness. It is essential to peace with God, that the soul should see that justice is satisfied. This is the reason why the death of Christ, why his blood, is so inexpressibly precious in the eyes of his people.
The whole argument of the Apostle in his Epistle to the Romans is founded on the principle that justice is a divine attribute distinct from benevolence. His argument is: God is just. All men are sinners. All, therefore, are guilty, i. e., under condemnation. Therefore no man can be justified, i. e., pronounced not guilty, on the ground of his character or conduct. Sinners cannot satisfy justice. But what they could not do, Christ, the Eternal Son of God, clothed in our nature, has done for them. He has brought in everlasting righteousness, which meets all the demands of the law. All those who renounce their own righteousness, and trust to the righteousness of Christ, God justices and saves. This is the gospel as preached by Paul. The point is that God cannot accept a relative righteousness; for Christ is the end of the law for righteousness (Rom 10:1-4). The skeptics and self-righteous cry “foul” when they learn that God’s standard of acceptable righteousness is solely Himself. God’s standard is exasperating and devastating to the self-righteous sinner. The divine standard is: equal Me in holiness or be cast out. It all rests on the proper assumption that God is just. The doctrine of the vindicatory justice, which has this clear evidence of its truth, is ineffably etched in the moral nature of man, in the religious experience of believers, and in the teaching and doctrines of the Scriptures. In terms of moral cause and effect (sowing and reaping), we are subject, not to necessary and self-acting laws, but to an intelligent, personal God, to whom we are accountable for our character and conduct, and who rewards and punishes his creatures according to their works.⁴
When the sinless One meets sinners in judgment, it will be a holocaust of unbelievable proportions. Man’s faculties (sight, hearing, thought, speech, etc.) were planted by God for His glory (Ps 94:9). But a lifetime of sin has utilized these faculties to serve sin and self—man has sold himself to do evil (1 Ki 21:20, 25). Spiritually, he has played the harlot (Num 15:39-41). The members of his body have been utilized as instruments of unrighteousness (Rom 6:13, 21). Is it any wonder then that God in fury will ‘reclaim’ the faculties of man (of the senses and reasoning) He created and ‘loaned’ to man? Yes, He will reclaim them and turn them back into dust (Ps 90:3).
We find certain statements in biblical apocalyptic language to be horrific: consider how the plague is described which God will send against those gathered against the people of God. Zechariah 14:12 -- Now this will be the plague with which the LORD will strike all the peoples who have gone to war against Jerusalem; their flesh will rot while they stand on their feet, and their eyes will rot in their sockets, and their tongue will rot in their mouth. 13 It will come about in that day that a great panic from the LORD will fall on them; and they will seize one another’s hand, and the hand of one will be lifted against the hand of another. 14 Judah also will fight at Jerusalem; and the wealth of all the surrounding nations will be gathered, gold and silver and garments in great abundance. 15 So also like this plague will be the plague on the horse, the mule, the camel, the donkey and all the cattle that will be in those camps. ⁵
He will gather the wicked into the winepress of the wrath of God. Our sensibilities are all but scandalized by the metaphor of a winepress designed to crush the life out of sinners. God is comparing the judgment of the wicked in that day to the crushing of grapes—and He is comparing their life blood drained out to red wine prepared for the enjoyment of the drinker. Their life blood is a kind of wine that is called for by the wrath of God (Is 63:1-6; Joel 3:9-15; Rev 14:14-20; 19:11-21). Why are our pulpits afraid to declare this stunning and withering truth that God has a wine press of wrath which will justly squeeze the life blood out of sinners?
Such severity is a foreign concept to us because we fail to think clearly about the divinely ordained principle of sowing and reaping. Galatians 6:7-8 says, “Do not be deceived, God is not mocked; for whatever a man sows, this he will also reap. For the one who sows to his own flesh will from the flesh reap corruption, but the one who sows to the Spirit will from the Spirit reap eternal life.” ⁶ God is not mocked—The Greek verb is, literally, to sneer with the nostrils drawn up in contempt. God does not suffer Himself to be imposed on by empty words: He will judge according to works, which are seeds sown for eternity of either joy or woe. Excuses for illiberality in God’s cause (Gal 6:6) seem valid before men, but are not so before God (Ps 50:21). Soweth—especially of his resources (2 Cor 9:6). Reap—at the harvest, the end of the world (Matt 13:39). 8. “He that soweth unto his own flesh,” with a view to fulfilling its desires. He does not say, “His spirit,” as he does say, “His flesh.” For in ourselves we are not spiritual, but carnal. The flesh is devoted to selfishness. Corruption—that is, destruction (Phil 3:19). The use of the term “corruption” instead, implies that destruction is not an arbitrary punishment of fleshly-mindedness, but is its natural fruit; the corrupt flesh producing corruption, which is another word for destruction: corruption is the fault, and corruption the punishment (see on 1 Cor 3:17; 2 Pet 2:12). We
4 Hodge, C. (1997). Vol. 1: Systematic theology (423–427). Oak Harbor, WA: Logos Research Systems, Inc. 5 New American Standard Bible: 1995 update. 1995 (Zec 14:12–15). La Habra, CA: The Lockman Foundation. 6 New American Standard Bible : 1995 update. 1995 (Ga 6:7–8). La Habra, CA: The Lockman Foundation.
need to hear from our pulpits the truth that sin is its own punishment. Future life only expands the seed sown here. They who sow tares cannot reap wheat. They alone reap life eternal who sow to the Spirit (Ps 126:6; Prov 11:18; 22:8; Hos 8:7; 10:12; Luke 16:25; Rom 8:11; Jam 5:7).⁷
Retribution (reaping judgment) is the response of a just and holy God to evil. The idea of God’s repayment for evil is prominent in at least three ways. First, the law of sowing and reaping is part of God’s economy (Gal 6:7–8). In the OT this takes the form of blessings and cursings. When Israel entered Canaan, half stood on Mount Ebal and half on Mount Gerizim and acknowledged that certain kinds of behavior bring consequences either for good or evil (Deut 27:1–26). In the NT the certainty of reaping what one sows is plain (Rom 6:21–22). Second, the coming judgment at the end of history includes repayment from God for rebellion. In the Great White Throne Judgment (Rev 20:11–15), two criteria of judgment seem to be involved. Unbelievers are said to be judged from both the books (plural) and the book (singular). Specifically, the “books” are examined to demonstrate that the deeds of the condemned have demonstrated God’s justice in judgment. A search of the “book” confirms that those being turned into hell are not named in the Lamb’s Book of Life, and hence divine retribution falls because they failed to respond to God’s gracious offer of salvation.
Finally, the justice of God’s condemnation of sinners gives rise to the necessity of the grace of God in salvation and the substitutionary death of Jesus on the cross. In the OT Isaiah noted this pointedly (Isa 53:6), “All of us like sheep have gone astray … but the Lord has caused the iniquity of us all to fall on Him.” In the NT Peter declares Christ suffered for us since He “bore our sins in His body on the tree” (1 Pet 2:24). An eternal principle of justice exists. God in His grace extends to sinners an offer of pardon rather than the retribution they deserve, because Jesus paid the price for human sin in His vicarious death, making it possible for the Father to be both “just” and still the “justifier” of the sinner who places his faith in Jesus (Rom 3:26).
Retribution takes several forms in the Bible. Sometimes, the response of God is temporal and physical. Defeat by one’s enemies, drought in the land (1 Kings 8:33–40), or even illness can be retributive acts of God (1 Cor 11:30; 1 Chron 21:12–13). More serious, the inevitability of physical death is a residual effect of God’s retribution (Gen 2:17; Rom 6:23). More serious, indeed irremediable, is “spiritual death” and the estrangement of the soul from God forever. This retribution carries with it confinement of the sinner in hell (Rev 21:8; Matt 18:19). For this reason the beginning of wisdom is still the “fear” of God (Luke 12:5) Paige Patterson⁸
Today’s humanistic, man-centered secular culture is dead set on obscuring the sacred canopy (God’s governance and ordering of the world) that hangs over all men. By sacred canopy, we mean that every transcendental, whether truth, beauty, justice, love, holiness, morality, order, or unity is there because our all-wise almighty God has placed it there in our existence and in our universe—He gives the universe and our lives meaning and coherence—He is the prime reality upon which all human experience rests. All truth is His truth; the totality of truth is backed up by His authority. Outside of Him is only darkness and confusion. We also call this sacred canopy, ‘Christian worldview’—the set of unified truths coming from the single mind of our Creator by which we interpret human experience and all reality.
The more that sacred canopy is concealed by secular culture; the more relativized people will become in their approach to truth and morality. Relativism denies that God is moral Governor of the universe who requires moral perfection from us, His creatures. As a consequence, relativism suggests that truth (including moral truth) is a totally subjective thing issuing merely from a person’s opinions, tastes and preferences. Therefore, each person is ‘free’ to determine right and wrong for themselves, and thus
7 Jamieson, R., Fausset, A. R., Fausset, A. R., Brown, D., & Brown, D. (1997). A commentary, critical and explanatory, on the Old and New Testaments (Ga 6:7–8). Oak Harbor, WA: Logos Research Systems, Inc. 8 Brand, C., Draper, C., England, A., Bond, S., Clendenen, E. R., Butler, T. C., & Latta, B. (2003). Holman Illustrated Bible Dictionary (434–435). Nashville, TN: Holman Bible Publishers.
each person is a world unto themselves. In effect, our young people are hearing that they may construct their own little universe with its own set of ethics. As if they can be the center of their own existence and others in their sphere will play by their rules and be in orbit around them. Holy Scripture describes this as a horrific state of affairs calling for the wrath of God (Rom 1:18-21; 2:1-12; Is 5:20-25; Jer 23:36).
On the Day of the Lord, when sinful arrogance meets burning holiness, there will be a conflagration that will never be quenched (2 Thess 1:6-10; Is 66:24; Rev 14:9-11). Billions of little self-worshippers will suddenly be confronted with their own frail creaturehood and God’s immutable justice. The sight of God will be unbearable—they will consider annihilation to be a mercy. They will ask for the rocks and mountains to crush them out of existence (Rev 6:12-17). But, man as the image of God cannot be annihilated. Even in eternal hell, the lost will still be image bearers—the divine image cannot be shed. This is truly what makes hell a place of unspeakable torment (Matt 13:40-42; 49-50).
When reflecting on the consequences of sin described so often in Scripture; it makes one wonder: why are pastors afraid to warn—to unfold the intensity of the consequences of sin? Why is there so much cowardice in this matter? Scripture is replete with warnings of the sternest kind. Yet, our churches are filled with people who have made a détente with sin (a ‘peace treaty’ with sin). God on the last day, when He reveals the secrets of men’s hearts, will expose these ‘treaties’ with sin for what they really are: the prosecution of a covert war against the holiness of God’s Name (Rom 2:16).
Our evangelicalism is so filled with ‘sweetness and lightness’ in the interest of tickling the ears of religious consumers that we have failed to systematically proclaim the holiness of God. Author David Wells notes that when the values of modernity are imbibed, God becomes weightless; pushed to the periphery. The doctrinal warning signals that something profound has gone wrong are missing.⁹
With God relegated to the outer margins, the ear-tickling request becomes, “tell us about self.” Once God is excluded from reality – religion may be nothing more than a fascination with ourselves. How terrifying a possibility it is that the immanent (God’s relational attributes such as love) may completely replace the transcendent (God’s incommunicable attributes such as omniscience; self-existence; omnipotence; and essential holiness). Wells sternly warns that when the imminent alone is remaining, and it is psychologized, God’s reality becomes no different than our own! He is there to satisfy our needs – He has no real authority. Ultimately, He bores us. Let us not forget that there is trauma in retaining the Scriptural, theocentric God of grandeur. The radical reconstruction of self by God’s revealed doctrine is needed or the knowledge of the Holy One will not sink in. The cost of retaining the knowledge of God is ongoing repentance.¹⁰ Rather than proclaiming the God of Scripture who commands reverential awe, we are seeing a god preached today who exists for therapeutic reasons.
This is a terrifying state of affairs because it means that countless people who have professed Christ’s Name are utterly ill-prepared for meeting God (1 Jn 2:28; Heb 10:26-31, 38-39). They seem baffled at the prospect that God is a consuming fire who will consume as a furnace forever all that is not like Him in holiness (Heb 10:26-31). Evangelicals have assumed that grace cancels out the need for a strong echo of holiness in all those who claim to know the Holy One (Heb 12:14).
Consumer-oriented Evangelicalism (in which the consumer is the flattered user of ‘spiritual resources’) would be stunned if its adherents really found out that God uses people for His purposes— Scripture is patently clear on this: we cannot use God or enlist Him in our agendas—God uses us, His creatures for His purposes. God raised up Pharaoh that through that king’s disobedience (and resultant plagues), God’s power might be made known and proclaimed throughout the whole earth (Rom 9:17). “The Lord has made everything for its own purpose, EVEN the wicked for the day of evil” (Prov 16:4).
9 David Wells, God in the Wasteland, Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans Publishing, 1994, pp. 88-91. 10 Ibid. p. 115.
God claims to have created the destroyer to ruin (Is 54:16), and He causes wellbeing and creates calamity (Is 45:7). All God does is in holiness and He always acts for the sake of His Name (Is 48:9-11).
Such theocentric thinking evades most in our lukewarm churches today. Evangelicals would hopefully be deeply disturbed to find out that the church has so radically replaced God that much that passes for worship is but a preoccupation with ourselves. It would be shocking to find out that at the bottom of our Christianity is not a reverential awe of God’s holiness; but instead, self-interest. Jonathan Edwards cautions that self-love in religion as our beginning point for seeking God can block us from true religion. Says Edwards, love to God starts with the affections perceiving the excellence of God’s nature —self-interest will be secondary, but self-interest will be primary in the hypocrite. The believer’s affections express true gratitude for who God is in Himself. The hypocrite’s motivations never rise above self-love. We love God for the beauty of His holiness—it is the start point for the appreciation of all other virtues and attributes in God.¹¹
When God’s holiness is not central we may find ourselves using religion to bribe our consciences so that we may pursue a self-directed life. In that spiritual state, we are consumers posing as true worshippers. We practice a manageable compartmentalized form of Christianity that never devastates us with the great things of God. Our cultural Christianity is symptomatic of the gospel gap in our churches and in our lives.
Consequently, the fear of God is at an all time low in our land and in our churches. We have defanged the Holy One—domesticated our God so that there is nothing about Him that could disturb us or make us uneasy. Secular culture’s empiricist approach to reality assumes that anything that causes pain must be bad.¹² Therefore we have falsely assumed that devastating views of God’s holiness are not in our best interest. We have erroneously concluded that God will adapt Himself to our own marketing—public relations form of Christianity. We dare to assume that God is so dependent on what people think of Him that He has abandoned His threats to demonstrate His wrath against sin by disasters; plagues; famines; wars; heresies; deprivation; destruction; death; and damnation. One hundred years of psychology in the West have placed self firmly at the center—God has been reduced to a cosmic bellhop to serve us.
We have fashioned a god who exists to meet our own perceived needs—so we hold the reputation of His Name hostage by our self-centered ideas of divine goodness. We have flattered ourselves that we are so important and valuable to Him—and that He is somehow dependent upon our sensuous bombastic praise worship—and that our organized religious expressions please Him enough to obligate Him and move Him to surely take us to heaven. Can this god we have conceived of be the God of Scripture?
Evangelicalism (in its patently consumer-driven orientation) would be startled to discover that every man and woman will exist forever as a divine object lesson—either as a vessel of mercy or of wrath (Rom 9:22-24). This is shocking to our ears because in our fascination with ourselves, we have imagined that we can enlist God into our life purposes and ‘add’ Him to our over-scheduled lives. Yes, it is alarming to discover that God uses people for His demonstrative purposes—even the unrighteous man for the day of evil (Prov 16:4).
We stand only because of a covenant of blood—through which God has taken possession of us (Heb 9:11-15; 10:10). We no longer belong to ourselves (1 Cor 6:17-20). Outside of this covenant every man and woman will be demonstrated to be a reprobate, a vessel of wrath (Rom 9:22)—by their damnation their rebellion and error will forever be ‘hung on the gallows’ of God’s unbending justice. Oh how sobering this is for evangelicals who have never thought about the fury of God’s wrath.
11 Jonathan Edwards, The Religious Affections, Carlisle, PA: Banner of Truth Trust, 1986, pp. 170-171, 178-179, 182-183. 12 Nancy Pearcey, Saving Leonardo, Nashville, TN: B & H Publishing Group, 2010, p. 2.
There is utter urgency associated with the command to repent because God’s wrath is so near. This reality commands reverential fear and awe because God has determined to publicly demonstrate His wrath on the reprobate. In terms of the total loss of their dignity and honor; God’s judgments in the Day of the Lord will take them from dust to dung (Ps 83:10; Jer 8:2; 9:22; 16:4; 23:40; 25:33; Zeph 1:17). They will move from existing as moral free agents to despicable creatures with the same abhorrence as dung on the ground (Is 66:24). These things sting our sensibilities because we so closely associate man’s value with God’s goodness toward us in the preservation of our wellbeing. We have not read our Bibles with care. The book of Lamentations—God’s postmortem of a holocaust is too foreign to us. We cannot even imagine that God decreed a judgment that involved cannibalism upon His covenant people in Judah who turned to idolatry (Lev 26:29; Jer 19:9; Lam 4:10).
We don’t understand the reason for God’s wrath. We can barely begin to grapple with the fact that in the Day of the Lord, God will vindicate His great Name over the dead stinking bodies of idolatrous reprobates (Rev 19:17-21). We seldom think of what hell really is—that the eternal misery there is an eternal testament to God’s holiness addressing His trampled law. Hell is the vindication of God’s holiness and justice. Eternal perdition reminds us that the destiny of worthless chaff is eternal burning (Ps 1:4-6).
The permanent attitude of the holy and just God when confronted by sin and evil is designated his ‘wrath’. It is inadequate to regard this term merely as a description of ‘the inevitable process of cause and effect in a moral universe’ or as another way of speaking of the results of sin. It is rather a personal quality, without which God would cease to be fully righteous and his love would degenerate into sentimentality. His wrath, however, even though like his love it has to be described in human language, is not wayward, fitful or spasmodic, as human anger always is. It is as permanent and as consistent an element in his nature as is his love. The injustice and impiety of men, for which they have no excuse, must be followed by manifestations of the divine wrath in the lives both of individuals and of nations (see Rom 1:18–32); and the OT contains numerous illustrations of this, such as the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah and the downfall of Nineveh (see Deut 29:23; Nah 1:2–6).
God’s temporal wrath (in history) is always tempered with mercy, particularly in his dealings with his chosen people (see, e.g., Hos 11:8ff.). For a sinner, however, to ‘trade’ upon this mercy is to store up wrath for himself ‘on the day of wrath when God’s righteous judgment will be revealed’ (Rom 2:5). Paul was convinced that one of the main reasons why Israel failed to arrest the process of moral decline lay in their wrong reaction to the forbearance of God, who so often refrained from punishing them to the extent they deserved. They were presuming upon ‘the riches of his kindness and forbearance and patience’, and failed to see that it was intended to lead them to repentance (Rom 2:4).
In their unredeemed state men’s rebellion against God is, in fact, so persistent that they are inevitably the objects of his wrath (Eph 2:3), and ‘vessels of wrath made for destruction’ (Rom 9:22). Nor does the Mosaic Law rescue them from this position, for, as the apostle states in Romans 4:15, ‘the law brings wrath’. Because it requires perfect obedience to its commands, the penalties exacted for disobedience render the offender more subject to the divine wrath. It is, to be sure, only by the merciful provision for sinners made in the gospel that they can cease to be the objects of this wrath and become the recipients of this grace. The love of God for sinners expressed in the life and death of Jesus is the dominant theme of the NT, and this love is shown not least because Jesus experienced on man’s behalf and in his stead the misery, the afflictions, the punishment and the death which are the lot of sinners subject to God’s wrath.
Consequently, Jesus can be described as ‘the deliverer from the wrath to come’ (1 Thess 1:10); and Paul can write: ‘Since, therefore, we are now justified by his blood, much more shall we be saved by him from the wrath of God’ (Rom 5:9). On the other hand, the wrath of God remains upon all who, seeking to thwart God’s redemptive purpose, are disobedient to God’s Son, through whom alone such justification is rendered possible (R. V. G. Tasker, The Biblical Doctrine of the Wrath of God, 1951; G. H. C. Macgregor, ‘The Concept of the Wrath of God in the New Testament’, NTS 7, 1960–1, pp. 101ff.; H.-C. Hahn, NIDNTT 1, pp. 105–113).¹³
Because these truths are so well concealed from the people of God, there is so little fear of God in the church today (Ps 36:1). Nevertheless, the battle of the ages is in full swing, and is catapulting toward its predetermined end. It is a battle over whose word will stand—the word of man or the Word of God. The Lord has filled this fallen creation with lessons for us about the brevity and fragility of life. Man is like the grass that perishes (1 Pet 1:24-25). Yet in our ignorance born of pride, each generation commits the error of Psalm 49—they imagine that whatever is under the power of their ownership (whether land, possessions, or their own body and pleasures) is an absolute ownership. They forget that what we call ownership is ultimately a stewardship under God’s ultimate ownership (see Ps 49:10-12ff.).
The church today is riddled with errors about ownership—the most pervasive error on ownership concerns the church members themselves. We have forgotten that the church is God’s property—it is His blood-bought flock (Acts 20:28; Titus 2:14)—He has the right to tell us (as stewards) how to tend, feed, lead, and care for ‘His flock’ (see all of Ez 34). We have forgotten that everything is on loan. We are tenants on the planet, tenants in and of our imagined possessions, and tenants in our bodies. We will give an accounting of our tenancy—judgment day is about our stewardship —everything has been on loan—it must be turned in to its rightful Owner (Ps 22:29; 39:4; 90:3-12; Job 34:12-15; 1 Chron 29:14-18; Rom 2:16; Rev 20:11-15).
We have not had the myth of ownership adequately exposed. Therefore we do not understand what it means to give an account to God. We assume that grace cancels out our highly charged comprehensive stewardship and accounting (Rom 14:7-12). This is symptomatic of a low view of Scripture and a high view of self. What a grave warning this is because Satan’s own rebellion was characterized by the same misplaced priorities—he distorted the knowledge of God to fit his own lusts.
Making Sin Abhorrent (part two)
By Jay Wegter
Lucifer’s original sin against God was a kind of wager. He misjudged God and His Word. Satan ‘bet’ that God was not as good as His Word—this mighty angel speculated that every word of God was not backed up by the Almighty’s attributes—Lucifer doubted that God staked His reputation on the unbreakability of His immutable Word. Lucifer imagined that God makes exceptions and that His most severe threats were idle threats. Satan threw down the gauntlet at the feet of God and dared God to fulfill His Word against him, the mighty angel who was the first among His creatures, (Heb., Lucifer, “the shining one”), His anointed cherub (Ez 28:14).
What was central to Satan’s own self-deception was a woefully inadequate estimation of what God’s Word really is. God is one with His Word because God’s Word is inseparable from His own character and perfect plan; it is His attributes and His wisdom committed to language. His Word upholds reality every moment; therefore there is nothing about it that is abstract, contingent, or variable (Is 42:9; 46:8-11; 55:11). His Word is forever settled in heaven (Ps 119:89). God and His Word are one because He has elevated His Word together with His Name (Ps 138:2).
Lucifer’s rebellious miscalculation will cause him to be cast into the lake of fire forever. The first of all the mighty angels refused to tremble at God’s Word. What evangelicals never think about is this:
13 Wood, D. R. W., & Marshall, I. H. (1996). New Bible dictionary (3rd ed.) (1250–1251). Leicester, England; Downers Grove, Ill.: InterVarsity Press.
every descendent of Adam is locked into the devil’s wager. For, they too have thrown down the gauntlet at the feet of God—they too have dared God to fulfill His Word over their dead bodies and send them to hell. They too (apart from redemption) will have entered into a wager in which they are betting their eternal souls that God is not as good as His Word; that He will not fulfill His Word against them. Thus, evangelicals do not understand the purpose of human history—that it is the public record of the honoring and the dishonoring of God and the record of what happens to each person as a result. They do not understand that God has determined to publicly destroy human wisdom (and all of its subscribers and proponents) by means of the cross of Christ (1 Cor 1:21). The consummation of human history will prove absolutely that God is as good as His threats and His promises.
When we think of this battle of the ages between the word of man and the Word of God, certain accounts in Scripture capture the very essence of this altercation. Jeremiah chapter 44 is a kind of moral microcosm of human history because in this chapter the battle of the ages reaches a boiling point which powerfully illustrates the source of the conflict between man and God. Sinners engaged in this battle have told themselves that God does not see—that God will not see their latter end—that God will not clear His Name at their expense—that God is not a God of comprehensive retribution (Ps 10:13; Amos 9:10). The attitude born of sinful satanic pride imagines that man has the ability to carry out his own word and that it is God’s Word that will fall to the ground unfulfilled. How tragic this deception is; for God has determined to make an example out of individuals with this posture of heart (Jer 44:17, 26-29ff.). Ken Ham got it right when he said that the Bible is the most dangerous book in the world because it is possible to destroy yourself by mishandling it (2 Pet 3:16).
The prophet Ezekiel further develops this theme of God vindicating His great Name in the destruction of sinners. For the book of Ezekiel is the book of God clearing His Name over the dead bodies of rebellious reprobates. For, scores of times the following phrase appears in the book of Ezekiel, “then they will know that I am the Lord”—but what a way to find out—as the object of His eternal wrath and contempt (Ez 5:7-17).
By neglecting God’s transcendence, holiness, wrath, and justice, Evangelicalism has stripped God of the great things about Him that make us tremble. Therefore many evangelicals do not think about the fact that the sight of God will be unbearable for the reprobate who would gladly prefer annihilation to exposure. When the Day of the Lord begins the whole creation will be a tool in God’s hands to evict the impenitent sinner. All stumbling blocks must be removed before the coming Kingdom can be installed (Matt 13:41). It is repent, OR you will be evicted from the planet—from your body and be damned (Rom 2:1-12). The urgency factor must again enter our preaching. We do not know what it is like to be confronted with our self-existent Creator. We cannot imagine what it is to have no standing before Him. We have given little time to consider what it means to have not a single square foot to stand upon in the entire creation—to be swept from the creation as some unclean thing that defiles its surroundings (Rev 6:12-17; 20:11ff.). God has a comprehensive record in heaven which will show what we have served on earth. All service of sin will be shown to be idolatry (Col 3:5).
God hates all forms of idolatry. He hates idolatry because of what it does to His Name and what it does to us, His image bearers. The first four iterations of the Ten Commandments are designed to guard against idolatry. Man was created for the love of God. At the heart of idolatry is self-love and self-worship (2 Tim 3:1-5). By contrast the godly man loves God instead of worshipping and serving the creature and the creation. Idolaters usurp the role of God by living as if their minds project reality onto the screen of life (again we see the theme of men placing their words above God’s Word).
Idolaters are fugitives under God’s moral government (Gal 3:22). They trample God’s law and challenge His absolute right to rule over them. They live with their backs to God—living as enemies of God in their minds (Col 1:21). As Bible believing Christians we must understand that idolatry tells a multitude of lies about God. It is an attempt to bring integration to our beings around something finite— something created. Idolatry lies about a relationship with the divine—that it can be built around will worship—that man can enter into a relationship of interdependency with God wherein God is obligated in certain ways by what we can do religiously and morally.
God hates religious idolatry because it equates God with something in His creation. God hates the idolatry of immoral behavior because it is lawlessness and the love of sin (1 Jn 3:4; Col 3:5). Idolatry degrades a man; enslaves a man; damages the image of God in man; exchanges the glory of the Godhead for something within the creation itself. Idolatry promises freedom and fulfillment; but can only deliver disappointment and degradation and servitude.
The idolater makes his own needs sovereign—then tries to fulfill those needs by sinning. He incurs more and more guilt by doing so. What sinners fail to understand is that in God’s universe, sin is its own punishment. In other words, since this universe exists as a stage for God’s moral majesty, the moral laws which are part of creation are just as real as gravity or any other physical law. Therefore, our holy Sovereign energizes the laws of moral cause and effect—of crime and punishment. Sinners break themselves in their breaking of God’s laws.
Unlike the recent ad for Las Vegas, there is no such thing as a moral holiday in God’s universe. Sin pays the guaranteed wages of death, separation, torment, and wrath. God does not have to think up punishments for sin. Creatures made in the image of a holy God have the moral mark of God upon them. That moral mark is called the conscience. The conscience will be fully activated by God’s wrath in eternal perdition. On judgment day the possibility of overriding the conscience will be forever gone. On that day, a man’s conscience, God’s law, and God’s verdict will be in perfect agreement. Only then (as God’s wrath ignites it) will a man’s conscience rise up to its full stature and take its eternal revenge against its ungrateful host.
To understand what sin is in this moral universe is to begin to comprehend that sin carries with it a curse. This is why sin is spiritual insanity—symbolic suicide. To keep sowing thorns in this moral universe governed by an absolutely holy God means that a day of harvest is coming. And when that day comes, each person will harvest more and will harvest longer than they could have possibly conceived. To sow thorns is to ultimately lie down in thorns and be pierced by them forever. To refuse to repent is to constantly be fashioning chains that will hold a person in a claustrophobic grip of radical crushing solitary confinement. Romans 2:8-9 describes the torment awaiting the impenitent. 8 but to those who are selfishly ambitious and do not obey the truth, but obey unrighteousness, wrath and indignation.
9 There will be tribulation and distress for every soul of man who does evil, of the Jew first and also of the Greek, ¹⁴
They will experience anguish, torturing confinement—crushing suffering. Sin unrepented of will fill the conscience with a busy voracious unstoppable toothed creature (a gnawing worm) which will consume (without removing) the soul (Mk 9:48). J. I. Packer captures the chilling action of eternal divine wrath in the following words, “A bad conscience is the most universal experience—and the most wretched. No outward change relieves it; you carry it with you all your waking hours. The more conscientious you are, the more your knowledge of having failed others, and God too, will haunt you. Without forgiveness you will have no peace. A bad conscience delivering at full strength, tearing your to bits in the name of God, is hell indeed, both here and hereafter.”¹⁵
The wrath of God unleashed in the conscience as a consuming force fragmenting the soul into pieces is a terrifying image. We evangelicals are often embarrassed to own a God whose holiness energizes these eternal judgments. We tend to make excuses for God because He does not apologize for
14 New American Standard Bible : 1995 update. 1995 (Ro 2:8–9). LaHabra, CA: The Lockman Foundation. 15 J. I. Packer, I want to be a Christian, Wheaton, IL: Tyndale Publishing, 1977, pp. 90-91.
the cruel destruction which awaits impenitent sinners. Our understanding of the pernicious nature of sin is deficient. This is the case because we do not grasp what it means to be created in God’s image.
Sin is parasitic—it seeks a willing host who will embrace its agenda and offer the faculties and members of the body and soul for its purposes. Sin has a goal—it acts like some shrewd alien living thing bent on obliterating its host—it is not content until it has practically wiped out the image of God in the second death—and even then it is not content. In everlasting perdition sin is cumulative—over the millennia, lost sinners in agony will lose every speck of meaningful connection and remembered wellbeing and, as the soul continues to come apart—the fragmentation will issue forth in a gnashing stream of madness.
Societies which reject God carry the seeds of their own inevitable implosion. Man cannot bear the incredible weight of being his own meaning, value, and significance. Our value is inseparable from being image-bearers of the God almighty. Man’s creational identity is inseparable from the reality that God requires moral perfection from us His creatures. Our glory and honor is tied so closely to our cultural calling to reflect and seek His glory in all we do. The wisdom of the world hates the cross of Christ. Therefore those who subscribe to the world’s wisdom will lose their glory.
There is a glory-honor-authority hierarchy which flows down from God, Ruler over all. God must be at the top. Order in society (justice, truth, honor, morality, mercy) comes from His laws. When a society that has known the ways of God (ancient Israel) abandons the laws of God and moves into wholesale idolatry; there is a necessary set of consequences which will unfold. In this moral universe God takes credit for energizing the forces of judgment. The order in a society that has known God is based upon the laws in His Word. Once those laws are replaced with idolatry (and the attributes of those idols); then God sends a spirit of distortion (Is 19:14-16; 24:1-6).
This is a fascinating and disturbing concept because our own nation has begun to enter the spirit of distortion phase of judgment at the hand of God. In this kind of judgment, the very glue that holds a society together begins to dissolve. Order is from God. Disorder and every evil thing come from replacing God with idols. In the social distortion which ensues when God sends a spirit of distortion, those normally honored are dishonored and raged against—women and children become the oppressors (Is 3:11-12). Fathers and leaders who have abandoned God should not be surprised when their honor disappears.
How we must cultivate a deep humility before God. We must regularly bring ourselves low—for He holds in His hands our life breath; our ways; our sustenance; our destiny. He holds even our own devotion and consecration to Him. Thus, the Psalmist may accurately pray to God to keep him from straying (Ps 51:10-13).
In our Western societies, approximately one hundred years of psychology have left a destructive legacy: the culture of self. Sinners already live as if they are independent of their Creator; but psychology has added an additional dimension—personal emotional needs are considered sovereign, even sacred. The sacred self is the new ‘holy of holies’. The love of self refuses to bow to any other sovereign (2 Tim 3:1-2ff.). In this expression of sin, the flesh sets the standard for a person’s behavior. The natural man refuses to bow to Christ, our man in glory (Heb 2:9; Phil 2:9-11). The unregenerate person will not be ruled by God’s truth, holiness, and love.
Not long ago I saw a bumper sticker which said, “There are no rules; just follow your heart.” Now what is disturbing is that this slogan resonates with so many in the rising generation. They read it and assume it is a fair representation of life as it is and of personal freedom. Yet, this saying is just as much open rebellion against God as demonic sorcery. Mankind must be ruled—we are created to serve. There is no such thing as master-less freedom. We will either be ruled by the Bible or the bayonet.
We must preach the all-pervasive reality of God’s moral government when we preach the gospel. In our post-Christian society, reality is assumed to be greater than God. Secular humanism has imbued the education system with the satanic notion that modern science possesses the best and most authoritative explanation of man’s existence. Therefore when our hearers listen to our gospel message they commonly assume that God is a category confined to religion. Our secular hearers imagine that there is a reality greater than God. And, that if the God of the Bible exists, then He is but a component of reality. Our preaching (like Paul on Mars Hill) must blast our listeners out of their assumed pantheism.
Therefore when we preach the good news, we ought to begin with God as Creator—for this is what Paul did whenever he addressed a biblically illiterate audience. The doctrine of creation anchors man’s accountability to his Maker. The doctrine of creation proclaims that the Triune God of the universe knows Himself; then makes a universe out of nothing. This means that reality: the cosmos and man and man’s place in the cosmos come from one mind—the mind of God almighty. The reason this is so significant in our postmodern world is because in public education we have been taught that this is a closed universe in which God is but one of the parts. Nothing could be further from the truth. This is an open universe in that it is acted upon from the outside. Our transcendent God created it; owns it; upholds it; rules it; defines it; judges it; and will ultimately restore it.
This is a moral universe because the Creator and Ruler of the cosmos is righteous and holy. The secularists have filled mass culture with the false idea that the church is restricting freedoms by imposing an arbitrary standard of morality upon society. Such secular lies fall away when one understands that human dignity and freedom are inseparably joined to God’s moral laws. God’s commandments are good and wise and loving—these laws protect our humanness and guard our freedoms. God’s moral commandments comprise a transcendent moral order which permeates creation. God is omnipresent and so are His moral laws. The laws of God are His character in code. As such they apply to all persons in all places at all times. This truth is the foundation for the fear of God.
God energizes moral cause and effect. Sin produces guilt. All crime is ultimately against heaven —crime issues forth in punishment because God is a God of retribution and justice. He would be unrighteous is He left sin unpunished.
The unbelieving sinner lives like the proverbial ostrich with its head buried in the sand so that it hides from its view the imminent threat above ground. The unbeliever denies that he is a fugitive under God’s moral government. He denies that an inescapable day of reckoning is coming. He denies that sin pays a guaranteed wage of death and hell. He denies that God’s wrath is perfect righteousness reacting to unrighteousness. Sin is the most insidious of all diseases because it so effectively hides the nature of the ailment from the sinner. Sin hides the following things from the perception of the transgressor: its defilement; its bondage; its consequences; and its terminal nature. It is exceedingly difficult to convince a postmodern person (who is steeped in moral relativism) of the seriousness of sin. But we must attempt to do so. For sinners are only saved by Christ through the powerful working of the Word and the Spirit. The natural man’s sentiment (under sin’s deception) is captured by the Psalmist, “He has said to himself, ‘Thou wilt not require it.’” In other words, the impenitent person is bribing his conscience by denying sowing and reaping—by denying the reality of divine retribution. Puritan theologians describe a person possessing this wicked thought as, someone think and acting as if they have an unconquerable soul.
The unbeliever’s conscience must be reached or he will never abandon himself to Christ in faith. The conscience is God’s moral mark on the nature of man. The conscience is filled with ethical reasonings—for it continually generates verdicts concerning all of a man’s moral behavior. It either condemns or excuses a man in all of his ethical choices (Rom 2:14-16). As such, the conscience is like an annex of God’s final courtroom; for a man’s conscience continually generates verdicts and subpoenas. We must keep this in mind, for when the unbeliever hears the Word preached, he finds that God’s Word is revealing the secrets of the heart. The Word finds all of the defiled areas of conscience and brings them to light. Therefore we must preach with this spiritual reality in view. For the Holy Spirit will call and quicken ONLY those He has convicted of sin, and judgment, and righteousness (Jn 16:8-11). On judgment day, the sinner’s conscience (for the first time in his life) will be in perfect agreement with God’s law, God’s books, and God’s verdict of condemnation. The possibility of overriding the conscience will be gone forever the moment God introduces the tiniest spark of His wrath. Then, in eternal perdition, the conscience will rise up to its full stature and begin to take its eternal revenge upon its ungrateful host.
Our gospel proclamation must reach the conscience of a man until he feels the hot displeasure of God against his sins—only when he begins to be crushed over his sins will he be desperate enough to flee to Christ. When the Spirit does His gracious work of conviction, He convinces a man that he is liable to divine judgment and is exposed to the eternal wrath of God.
The Spirit begins by first convincing a man that he is a transgressor under God’s moral government. Next the Spirit shows the man that he has accumulated a mountain of guilt and debt to the requirements of God’s holy law. Then the sinner is to conclude that his sins are an offense to God and his eternal soul is in grave danger. The sinner’s conscience must be brought to a point at which it agrees that God’s laws are righteous and just AND that God’s threatened penalty for sin is righteous and just. Only when the sinner is willing to agree with what God says about sin (that the sinner deserves eternal perdition) is that man ready for the final stage of conviction. In the last stage of conviction, the Spirit convinces the sinner that he is unable to lessen his penalty or to work off his guilt or to contribute anything to his needed salvation—he literally is a slave to sin. Only sovereign mercy can save him.
Once the sinner has been brought to the end of self—that is the end of self-righteousness and self-help—then the Spirit is desirous of showing that man Christ’s willingness to save him. By the Spirit’s irresistible calling power, the quickened sinner is enabled to close with Christ (that is to savingly believe). This author finds it insipid that preachers attempt to peddle or sell the benefits of Christ—and then persuade sinners, “why not do it today?”—as if Christ is waiting for these thoughtful ‘consumers’ to finally come to their senses and complete some sort of religious transaction. That is not biblical salvation. The sinner who has been fully convicted by the Spirit and called will not refuse Christ—he will not wish to reject Christ—he will fall at the feet of Christ—seeking His mercy and owning Him as Savior and rightful Lord of the cosmos (Phil 2:9-11).
The Christ’s death for the ungodly is the basis for our justification (Rom 5:6–8). One of the most glorious truths which ever will cross the mind of man is this. “… When we were yet without strength [in other words, when we still were unsaved] in due time Christ died for the ungodly” (5:6). Notice that the death of Christ for the ungodly now becomes a reoccurring theme in this passage. It is found again in verse 8. “But God demonstrates His own love toward us, in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us.” We were sinners, undone and without hope before a holy God. Yet the love of God and His desire to satisfy the demand of His own righteousness without destroying those whom He loved, brought forth the free and gracious provision of a means of redemption for us. We had no cause for hope that God would help us out of our impossible predicament, “For scarcely for a righteous man will one die; yet perhaps for a good man someone would even dare to die” (5:7).
But Someone did die! And it was not another sinner whose death would have made no difference in resolving our sin problem and its death sentence. It was One Who was spotless, Who “… knew no sin …” (2 Cor. 5:21), Who “… was … without sin” (Heb. 4:15) … In Psalm 41 He says of Himself through the pen of His human ancestor, David, while awaiting His own resurrection: “As for me, You will uphold me in My integrity, and will set me before your face forever” (Psa. 41:12). The word translated “integrity” here is the word which was used of the Passover lamb which had to be spotless and perfect in every way before it could be sacrificed on Passover night (cf. Exo. 12:5–6). And it was God’s spotless lamb, the Lord Jesus, who died in our place long ago. “God commended His love toward us in that while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us” (5:8).
The deliverance from wrath that justification brings is through Christ (5:9). This theme of the death of Christ on our behalf reoccurs again in verse 9. The wrath which we deserved as sinners before a holy God now is resolved through the death of Christ. Paul says: “Much more then, having now been justified by His blood, we shall be saved from wrath through Him.” It is clear that justification, or being counted righteous in God’s holy court of law, is a present possession since the event already has taken place in the past. He says: “… having now been justified by His blood … .” But it also is clear that this event which is past for the believer also brings results which still are future. “… We shall be saved from wrath through Him.” The question of our eternal destiny forever has been settled. The believer does not have to wait for the judgment seat of Christ or for the great white throne to find out if God’s wrath yet awaits him. He need never fear that at someday in the future he still will face the wrath of God. In the justification which Christ obtained, which He paid for with His own blood, God forever assures us of the fact that “ … we shall be saved from wrath through Him.”
The satisfaction of judgment brought by Christ’s death in our place saves us from the wrath of God (5:10a). Ah, here is one of the many results of the death of Christ. “But God commended His love toward us in that, while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us.” We are saved from wrath through Him. And surely the sinner must come to recognize that, in his fallen state, he fully deserves the wrath of God. But an essential part of the gospel presentation should include the fact that, because Christ’s death took upon Himself the wrath of God which we deserved, it now is no longer is due us. The enmity of which Romans 8:6–8 speaks is gone because “… you are not in the flesh but in the Spirit, if indeed the Spirit of God dwells in you. Now if anyone does not have the Spirit of Christ, he is not His” (Rom. 8:9–10). How that is possible will be explained later by Paul. The very next part of Romans 5:10 presents yet another of the results of the death of Christ.¹⁶
CONCLUSION:
Thus to be deeply converted is to marvel at the fact that the only begotten Son of God came to earth to enter the ‘cog-works’ of God’s unbending justice—to enter those cog-works to be crushed for us (Is 53:5-9). The believing sinner is overwhelmed with the reality of Christ in the sinner’s place providing the obedience to God’s law that we could not supply—and Christ in the sinner’s place bearing the penalty of death and divine wrath that we could not endure nor satisfy in our own persons. Therefore it is impossible to gain Christ (as Savior) and not be conquered by His love—love that caused Him to be willing to be the curse for us so we could go free and be adopted by God (2 Cor 5:14-15; Gal 3:10-14). The truly converted person WILL find his highest calling to give himself back to God as his entire life goal and direction.
There is no life direction change until the cross of Christ is applied to the individual—in essence slaying the sinner’s imagined sovereignty. The cross subdues our will to Christ. The cross severs us from the world—crucifies us to the world and the world to us (Gal 6:14). Salvation is the most radical kingdom transfer one may conceive (Col 1:12-14). Our entire perspective on source is changed— we find our all in the Lord (2 Pet 1:1-4).
The cross of Christ produces a saving knowledge of the Holy One (Jn 17:3). This saving knowledge cannot fail to issue forth in ongoing repentance, worship, mortification of sin, service, consecration, and overflowing gratitude. To truly know God is light years apart from a mere profession of faith. In the saving knowledge of God there is a vital relationship given. In this relationship the Holy Spirit builds in the believer a sensitivity to the Father (2 Cor 7:1). We know what invokes His anger— how unbelief and self-will offend Him. We know what pleases Him—what brings His approval. This is a real relationship which has a language of love. The true believer is highly sensitive to this language of love. As a result he refuses to objectify his Christianity. He will not settle into a manageable, outward form of religion.
16 Northrup, B. E. (1997). True evangelism: Paul's presentation of the first five steps of the soul-winner in Romans.
Instead, the man of God dares to draw near because he is clothed in the righteousness of Christ. He walks with God as with One who has eyes as a flame of fire (Rev 1:14-18). He knows that God’s relationship with him is one of invasive holiness (Heb 4:12). He walks and communes with Christ Himself—the One who passes among the lamp stands of the churches—examining their works and ways and walk with Him. The true believer makes all these connections—this is anything but an abstract, theoretical Christianity. To walk with God is to be ever aware that we are thinking, speaking, desiring, moving, deciding under the penetrating gaze of His holiness. The man of God is therefore willing to be searched by God (Ps 139:23-24). He welcomes the Lord’s rearranging work in his life. He wants to live by faith. He rejects the arrogant empiricism of the day which attempts to cope with life by bare sense, sight, and unaided reason (unaided by submission the Holy Scriptures).
The man who walks with his God continually meditates on the great truths of God in Christ. This spiritual man knows that nothing in the Christian life is to be held in a theoretical fashion. Therefore he makes it his habit to hold fast and to further develop a vision of Christ; a vision of the glory to come; and a vision of the holiness of God. The man of God frequently checks himself to see what it is in the Word of God that he that he has not been believing. He makes countless course corrections. He grows spiritually in an aggressive manner (taking heaven by storm). He the Lord’s steward—he is a man of principle who builds with Christ. He longs to assume the privilege of edifying the members of the body and fulfilling his role in the kingdom. He is a faithful man—he knows that this faithfulness only comes by taking up his cross daily. He counts it all joy if God lets him help even one saint stay vertically aligned (established in the faith and walking in fellowship with the Lord—Colossians 2:6-7).
A d d the grand demonstration